Tonight I found myself sitting alone at a restaurant bar, cradling a glass of wine. The back of my hand has so many notes scribbled on it that I had to write a few on my wrist. This usually means I have a lot going on. I really don’t make it a habit to go to restaurants alone, but sometimes you just don’t want to do your own dishes and, if you know the bartender, it’s kind of like having dinner with a friend.
We talked a bit about life. He had been through a rough patch at home, but seemed genuinely happy with the direction in which he and his family were heading. In ten years of marriage, there’s bound to be a bump in the road now and then. They had been working on things and I caught him genuinely smiling as he talked about his wife and kids. This made me smile as I tore apart my bread and sipped my wine.
There was a small group of people next to me who had just come from a funeral. They were talking about an elderly man who had been in failing health for some time. Actually, they were talking about his widow who, even in her own advanced age, had dedicated her time to caring for her husband. She had a schedule of medications and injections her late husband had needed, sometimes every hour or two. They lamented about how difficult it must have been for her to set schedules and timers and notes and reminders.
I couldn’t help but chime in.
“Excuse me,” I said, “but maybe it is proof that there is such thing as ‘love.’”
They all stopped talking. I mean, let’s be honest: I am no one to wax poetic about ‘true love.’
Maybe rather than feel badly for this widow, we could all hope that, at the end of our days, there is someone who cares for us enough to dedicate every waking (and sleeping) moment to caring for us and making sure we are as comfortable as possible at a point in our lives when we can no longer care for ourselves? Or, that we are so devoted to someone, that the rest of the world melts away and that person is the only thing that matters? Maybe, in this age of disposable relationships and virtual dating, we could take a lesson from this strong woman, who probably never saw herself as the final caregiver to the man who promised to love and protect and care for her so many years ago?
We ordered another round.
Tomorrow I am going to a wake for a woman I have never met. Over the past few months I have come to know her through the stories her family told me. I have seen paintings of snowy houses she painted and I have seen pictures of a beautiful woman with blonde hair and a lively smile. Sadly, over the past few months, this woman had slipped away from the woman she was and the family that loved her…and a husband who was – who IS still devoted to her. Every day, this man would pack a cooler and drive to the next town to the facility where his wife lay in a bed or sat in a chair. Every day, three times a day, he would sit with her for every meal and help her and keep her company, even when he wasn’t sure if she knew he was there. Alzheimer’s.
Would it matter if it was cancer, Alzheimer’s, Lou Gehrig’s, MS, a car accident? The end of a life is tragic. The bitter irony of it all is, like going to see “Romeo and Juliet,” we know the end of every story.
The reason we take the chance on being part of the ‘story’ is the hope that we could find that true love whom we can care for and who will care for us at the end of it all, and whom we can’t imagine life without – that someone who makes time stop; someone whose entire life is so wrapped up with our own that each memory can last forever, even if it’s for a momentary smile through the haze of medication and confusion; someone whose hand we will hold in the dark until the very end. We hope to have that special relationship with the kind of love that can outlive our life.
I have to admit – tonight, as I walked off my glass of wine with my dog in the drizzling rain, I cried.
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About Cat Wilson
